X-Factor Change Management™

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I was recently challenged by a client of mine to take a 31-page OCM strategy written by a Big 4 consulting firm and make it brief and understandable. He indicated that the Big 4 strategy was way to verbose and theory-based. He wanted my final document to be no more than 2 pages. The client was convinced that this could be done and heard through the OCM grapevine that I had the capability to meet the challenge.

I started out by setting up a day's worth of meetings with key leaders and stakeholders. After meeting with them, I found that many of them were familiar with Prosci's ADKAR Change Management Model and felt as though individuals throughout the organization could relate to the methodology and that it would be embraced. After a full 10-hour day of interviews with key leaders and stakeholders, I spent the next two days crafting an OCM Strategy. I maintained close contact with the interviewees and asked several follow-up questions. I finalized the document and circulated it to the leadership team for review and approval. They loved it and immediately implemented the strategy!

The final product was a no-frills Excel spreadsheet that was 2 pages in length. Here is the spreadsheet format that I used:

Organizational Change Vision Statement - a brief vision statement at the top of the spreadsheet with 4-5 key desired outcome bullets.

"Impossible situations can become possible miracles." - Robert H. Schuller

"In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy."-J. Paul Getty

"It is never too late to become what you might have been." - George Eliot

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." - W. Edwards Deming

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." - C. S. Lewis

"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon...everything's different." - Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes

"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have." - Margaret Mead

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." - Heraclitus

"None of us can change our yesterdays, but all of us can change our tomorrows." - Colin Powell

"Nothing endures but change." - Heraclitus

"Observe constantly that all things take place by change." - Marcus Aurelius

"The changes we dread most may contain our salvation." - Barbara Kingsolver

"The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live." - Flora Whitmore

"The key to change... is to let go of fear." - Rosanne Cash

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." - William Blake

"The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." - Alan Watts

"The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades." - John Kotter

"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." - Albert Einstein

"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress." - Charles Kettering

"Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly." - Francis Bacon

"Things do not change; we change." - Henry David Thoreau

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." - Henri Bergson

"Transformation literally means going beyond your form." - Wayne Dyer

"We change whether we like it or not." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing." - R.D. Laing

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us." - Joseph Campbell

"When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." - Alexander Graham Bell

"When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them." - Andy Warhol

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." - Victor Frankl

"When you're finished changing, you're finished." - Benjamin Franklin

"Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer." - Shunryu Suzuki

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller

Change always comes bearing gifts. - Price Pritchett

Please understand my friend, that where you find yourself tomorrow is a function of the decisions and actions you take today." - Akin A. Awolaja

Saturday, April 14, 2012

These best practices have been created as a result of my 25 years of extensive change management experience, lessons learned after many change management projects, learning from other practitioners/clients, and ongoing research in the practice of change management. Here is a link to the 25 Change Management Best Practices.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

A CEO recently asked me to come up with "no more than 10 things... and only on one page" that will help his change initiative be successful. He liked what I came up with and called his Change Steering Committee together to review the document. We made a couple of slight changes as a team and decided to call the document "A Blueprint for Successful Change Management".

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Here is a linkto a SlideShare document that outlines a Visioning and Strategic Agenda process that I have used with several clients over the years.This process has produced outstanding results - feel free to download it and use it!

Friday, June 24, 2011

Read this innovative eBook by Luc Gallopin, moderator of the Organizational Change Practitioner's Group on LinkedIn. Luc is a fellow "in the trenches" change agent. Highly recommended! http://bit.ly/aHE0vk

Friday, January 14, 2011

This question was recently posted on the Organizational Change Practitioners discussion board on LinkedIn. Here is my reply:

"To me, the missing piece is 'completing the change' by effectively 'completing the transition' from the old state to the new state. In my opinion, most of the focus is on 'making the change happen', and once that's done little attention is placed on the transition (pain, feelings of loss, emotional support, fear, etc,) to ensure long term success of the change. This is frequently the case with IT-enabled change!

Not completing the transition usually results in significant/long-term dips in post change productivity, poor morale and can undermine the entire change effort. In many cases the cultural changes never happen as a result of this short-sightedness.

So, more attention needs to be placed on change transition vs. change management... William Bridges authored Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change almost 20 years ago. It's a great book, but often ignored. This finishing touch to the change process needs to become a key, recognized component of the practice of change management."

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About Me

Jim Markowsky is the President of X-Factor Solutions LLC. He is a Certified Change Management Consultant and Transformational Leader with the vision to see the possibilities and the ability to coach others to achieve more than they imagined. He has over 25 years of Organizational Change and Transformation experience. E-mail: jim.markowsky@gmail.com ■ Jim loves to hand sew and craft leather products in his spare time and has done so for friends and family for many years. He just recently opened up Oak Leaf Leather Goods, a shop on etsy ■ Jim also enjoys modifying wristwatches to make them unique and more interesting than the mass produced versions.